Thursday, 21 March 2013

THE NEW HOUSE BEGINS!

These past weeks have been both busy and quite exciting. The latter because we have appointed a builder to build our new house. We have bought an old house in 'old Bowral' .. which is coming down and we will be building a new one in it's place. I quite like the existing house. It has two bay windows, is full brick and I thought it would renovate well. But as we investigated further, it became apparent that the damp problems were pretty serious. The builder told us that starting again would be cheaper in the long run.

Over the next months, I will be sharing the building experiences and developing house... deliberating over decisions and ideas. I do feel that I could be presumptuous in assuming that you all might be interested! I will however, have these posts to reflect back on when the projects reaches the end.

Below are a couple of pics of the old house. The elevations have been drawn by Andrew Bell. This is the second house that we are working on together and as before, it is a pleasure.The old house sits on a 1500sq meter block and it faces North.

Situated on a lovely street in "Old Bowral. An easy walk into the town.

The rear of the property

This is the front elevation and to the far right is the garage which is shown in the photo below.

I love the new plans and am so looking forward to the whole project! We are in the process of making many many decisions. I know that the lovely Heidi of Adelaide Villa knows all about this as she is in the process of renovating her lovely home in Adelaide at present.The demolishing team have been taking the old house apart for the past 10 days and I will show pics of the empty block in the next post! I have found that Pinterest has been a wonderful place to find and store ideas! I am presently dreaming of ideas for the new garden.Before I can really begin enjoying things I still have the move to face. We have lived on the farm for 8 years and there is an enormous amount of clearing out and organising to get on top of. Happy days!!

I'm so happy to hear your news, and how exciting that you are beginning the new home already. I Love your plans - it looks just beautiful. The old house has a certain charm about it, but I could see from the last photo some rather greenish looking areas of brick.... so I can understand why the damp is making it cheaper to rebuild. Lots of posts please!! I will love to hear all about your developing plans for the house. We got our landscape plans last week for the back garden, and I'm really pleased with it. I'll do a blog post about it soon, but I've been looking at your garden pins, and repinning many and dreaming about the lovely green space that is the reward at the end of the building process as well. Good luck with the packing up of the farm, not something I envy you for as I loath moving! xx

Hello Heidi.... Thank you for your lovely comment! I am so looking forward to seeing more of your garden developing and I have to admit that I am rather obsessed with garden ideas at the moment! Hopefully, once the move is behind me, I will also be posting more regularly! xx

Starting a new build is always so exciting! It was unfortunate that the existing house was impractical as a renovation project but your new house plans look fabulous! Will enjoy all your progress posts! Good luck with than unenvieable moving task! x KL

So exciting! Were you abel to save any of the plants from around the house? The plans look stunning. Can't wait to see it unfold. I also really like the link to Adelaide Villas. So cold here and busy with work that our renovations are on hold currently. Is driving me crazy. Itching to get things moving... Good luck with the move!

Hello Susie.... Thank you for your comment! There are loads of basalt rocks scattered around which we have stock-piled. We have two magnificent trees - Ginko Biloba and a Hymalayan Cedar - in the back yard which I am so thrilled with. There is also a dwarf Japanese Maple which I am planning to pot (in a very big pot!) and use. Sadly, the garden has been very neglected over the past couple of years and the odd plant here or there might be worth saving. I am planning to have a very simple garden - with repetitive planting - for impact and ease of maintenance!. I cant believe how cold and awful the weather still is in Oxford!! Hopefully your spring will arrive soon! I am sure you are desperate by this stage! xx

What has happened to your friend Bumble? I went to check Bumble's blog and found it had been taken down! This is very distressing for someone who is both an avid follower of this blog and also Bumble's, are you able to shed any light on what has happened? I hope everything is OK at Lynwood Farm! Best regards, a fond follower of the adventures of Bumble, Penny and Bunny.

Dear Anonymous! I am happy to report that Bumble is in excellent health but fear she grew a little "over" doing her blog! All is well on Lynwood farm! Thanks for your comment.... Bunny and Penny are as cute as ..... they feature regularly on Instagram!! All the best! Jenny xx

The new house looks like it will be fabulous. And I imagine it will be lovely to be able to walk into town easily. We moved from one farm to another and went from being 40km to town to 10km and it was amazing the difference.

On a completely different note - I am planning a warm coloured area in our garden after seeing your gorgeous golden garden of a few posts ago. Do you mind if I ask what varieties of roses you used? They look stunning - I saw the climbing rose is named in the post but was wondering if you could remember the others? If it is too much hassle please do not worry.

Dear Farmer's wife ... I would love to share the roses I used there!!. The hero would have to be Ashram - a Hybrid T and a strong and profilic flowerer!!. The David Austin roses are - Pamela Austin, Compte de Champagne and Jude the Obscure. They were planted among red Heleniums, yellow Achillea, Yellow Phlomis, White Echinachea (cone flowers), Orange poppies, Bronze Heucera - not sure of the exact name, iris - in a lovely mellow orangey colour, Sedum Autumn Joy , and a number of Geums of varying colours. Crown Princess Margaretha is the lovely climber against the stone wall. I feel very flattered that you like this garden as I was a little unsure when I originally planned it as blue,pink and white are the colours that most people go for. My neighbour is also using this scheme in her lovely new garden - I am tickled pink!!( not orange!!)Jenny xx

Thanks so much Jenny - I really appreciate your advice! The bronzey orangey irises are gorgeous too. I need to be patient now and wait for about 6 weeks for it to cool down a bit more (not to mention us get our entire crop in!).

If you get hold of an Iris catalogue, you will soon find the bronzey orangey iris... they really are lovely! Yes... we are having such a hot Autumn... I can imagine your impatience! What crop will be you be planting?! x

How funny you mention the lovely Heidi from Adelaide Villa here because she told me that I would love your blog and I already do...The project looks like an amazing and exciting one. I really look forward to following the developments - wishing you the best of luck with the home!PS you have such a modern setup on your blog - very cool.

I'd love to hear from you!

It amazes me when I look at the stats to see that my humble ramblings are read all over the world. I'd love to get to know a couple of you - so please leave a comment! Some of the blogs I follow have literally hundreds of comments... wonderful!